Tom Leung, who writes the Raising Humanity newsletter, did something few families do. In June, with his older son headed to Cornell at full price, he ran the real financial math on a $400,000 elite degree and published the result.[1]
His conclusion is uncomfortable and correct. The elite-degree path earns the most lifetime income of any option he modeled, and it still “finishes last in wealth by a wide margin.” The reason is the $400,000 you spend at 18 instead of invest. Over nearly four decades, that capital grows into far more wealth than the degree’s higher salary adds. In his words, “compound interest does not care about your fancy diploma.”
The research backs him, and it goes one step further. When economists Stacy Dale and Alan Krueger compared students who were accepted and rejected by comparable schools, attending the more selective one barely changed their earnings. The exceptions were students from more disadvantaged backgrounds, for whom the selective school appeared to pay off more.[2] Their follow-up study found exceptions too, among them students whose parents had less education.[3] So a family paying full price, whose child is not among the students the research singles out, is paying for a selectivity premium the research does not find.
He already sensed this when he weighed UC Davis against Cornell. My book makes the rule explicit: the major clears the bar before the school does. His older son chose Cornell for plant science and environmental engineering, two fields with very different payoffs, and the cheaper school he weighed, UC Davis, is what he calls “a world-class alternative.”
In plant science, the cheaper public degree comes out far ahead
Same family, two colleges, same major. In plant science, UC Davis graduates earn about $72,000 four years out and Cornell’s about $59,000, close to the national median for the field. At each school’s average net price, the Davis degree clears the high school path by about $94,000 and pays for itself by 36. The Cornell degree never catches up, even at net price. At full sticker price, which is what the Leungs are paying at Cornell, Davis falls about $1,000 short of the high school path and Cornell falls about $274,000 short. His other field changes the answer: Cornell’s environmental engineering graduates earn about $103,000, and that degree pays at Cornell.
| University of California, DavisDavis, CA | Cornell UniversityIthaca, NY | |
|---|---|---|
| Plant sciences, bachelor’s | ||
| Median earnings, 4 years out | $72,335 | $58,960 |
| National median for the field | $56,567 | $56,567 |
| Median debt (completers who borrowed) | Not reported | $14,250 |
| Price (whole school) | ||
| Sticker price (per year) | $41,238 | $88,140 |
| Average net price (per year) | $14,741 | $28,690 |
| Return on the plant science degree | ||
| Lifetime value vs. high school, net price | +$94k | -$60k |
| Return vs. high school, net price | 178% | -58% |
| Break-even age, net price | 36 | Never |
| Lifetime value vs. high school, full price | -$1k | -$274k |
Source: College ROI model at collegeroi.org, using U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard field-of-study earnings, measured four years after completion, and each school’s institution-wide cost, since the Scorecard does not report price by program. Values compare against a high school baseline and are net of federal taxes.
His younger son’s filmmaking is a different and far riskier bet, because across film and photography programs earnings sit close to the high school line, and a higher price buys very little more. Same family, opposite major.
In film and photographic arts, a higher price buys very little more in earnings
Each dot is one bachelor’s program. As the annual sticker price climbs from about $14,000 to $90,000, earnings four years out rise only about $1,100 a year for every $10,000 of annual price. Four years of an extra $10,000 is $40,000. Even growing with wages, that raise needs nearly three decades to earn back the $40,000 before taxes, and at the model’s discount rate it never does. The median program sits about $4,000 above what a high school graduate of the same age earns in the model, and about 3 in 10 programs sit at or below that line.
Source: College ROI model at collegeroi.org, U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard. 143 of 332 bachelor’s programs in Film/Video and Photographic Arts (CIP 50.06) have both cost and four-year earnings data. The high school line is the model’s high school earnings at the same age, seven years after high school. Shaded band shows the 25th to 75th percentile of earnings.
He is asking exactly the right question. The answer is that the major decides first. Where the major clears the bar, as environmental engineering does at Cornell, the elite degree can pay. Where it does not, the elite degree is a luxury purchase, fine for a family that can afford it and a mistake for one that borrows to buy it. Run your own numbers at collegeroi.org.
Reference Sources
- Leung, Tom. “The $400,000 Elite College Tuition Question.” Raising Humanity, June 7, 2026.
- Dale, Stacy Berg, and Alan B. Krueger. “Estimating the Payoff to Attending a More Selective College: An Application of Selection on Observables and Unobservables.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 117, no. 4 (2002): 1491-1527. NBER Working Paper 7322 (1999). Students admitted to and rejected by comparable colleges: those who attended the more selective school “do not earn more.” The same abstract reports that “the average tuition charged by the school is significantly related to the students’ subsequent earnings. Indeed, we find a substantial internal rate of return from attending a more costly college.” The 2011 follow-up below revisits that result. The abstract also reports that “the payoff to attending an elite college appears to be greater for students from more disadvantaged family backgrounds.”
- Dale, Stacy, and Alan Krueger. “Estimating the Return to College Selectivity over the Career Using Administrative Earnings Data.” NBER Working Paper 17159, 2011. The selectivity premium is generally indistinguishable from zero in selection-adjusted models, with notable exceptions for Black and Hispanic students and students from less-educated families. The return to net tuition is “small and never statistically distinguishable from zero” once unobserved student traits are partly controlled, and the authors say the 2002 tuition estimate “appears to [have] been atypically high,” though “the large standard errors make it difficult to draw inferences.”